The newest Nissan Sentra is car. It isn't exciting or thrilling at all. But the Sentra has a long performance history, so it was only a matter of time before a car came along to continue that. Enter the 240 horsepower Sentra Nismo Concept.
We all knew that a performance Sentra would be coming, but they traditionally carry the SE-R badge. In a change, Nissan is now using the Nismo name to represent its highest performance variants. SE-R is dead, long live Nismo.
Nissan says this is a concept, but who are they fooling? None people. Aside from some styling flourishes, I'm willing to bet this is a car we'll see in production.
I sure hope that's the case. The Sentra Nismo has a 1.6 liter turbo four under the hood with 240 horsepower and an equal amount of torque connected to a six speed manual.
It's pretty aggressive, and not wimpy like the current Sentra. And thank God it ditches the CVT. I'd expect we'll see a real deal production version in the next few months... Perhaps at Detroit.